The Selection of Professors
I
IN 1781 one Immanuel Kant published a work entitled The Critique of Pure Reason, which shook the foundations of learning and has remained the most important philosophical work to this day. The author, a teacher of philosophy in a small provincial university, was then fifty-seven years old. Up to that time he had published nothing of exceptional quality. According to the standards of many of our university administrations in the United States to-day, he would have been fired twenty years before the completion of his immortal work. Whether Kant, fragile in body and modest in spirit, would have survived the shock might well be doubted. Poor all his life, he needed the protection and security of a fixed position in an established institution to mature. How often is such a crime committed in America to-day? No one can tell.
It may be objected that Kant was a philosopher and therefore his case was peculiar. But David Hume, Kant’s illustrious predecessor, wrote his most important work at the age of twentyseven and spent the rest of his long life developing his thought. Yet Hume, who possessed a small legacy, never was connected with teaching for any length of time. Needless to say, many American university presidents would have been delighted to hire so distinguished a scholar, provide him with a full professorship and all kinds of research funds, at the age of thirty. For what purpose? Hume did not wish to teach, nor had he much to say after his important intuitions had been formulated.
Similar cases could be multiplied at will. Some men mature early, others late. Some kinds of research lead on to a far-flung track with complex ramifications, yielding little result for a long time; others happen to strike significant results early and remain sterile ever after. There is no ready-made formula by which future intellectual achievement can be gauged. I feel that in the intellectual sphere we have absolutely no basis for such predictions, yet the policy of our universities is built upon just such irresponsible prophecies by the older men, or upon the even more haphazard impressions of ‘administrators.’
A great deal of the most important scholarship is not the result of research, but rather of wide reading and experience. This is particularly true in the humanities and in the social sciences. While the ability to carry on technical research in a particular field is an important part of the equipment of any teacher and scholar, it is by no means central. Broadly speaking, I should maintain that it is more important to be able to think than to be able to do research. It is the quality of mind which counts in the long run.
And it is this quality of mind which the student is able to gauge in a teacher, and which makes it possible to base some fairly accurate predictions on student judgment. But what is student judgment? Is one student’s opinion as good as another’s? Or is it a matter of taking a poll? I have found that the kind of opinion you would get from a poll is not very helpful in discovering intellectual mettle. It is an old experience that men rarely recognize ability above their own level. An average student opinion will discover for you the teacher with no more than just the average equipment. Such a teacher probably possesses qualities of oratory which are exceptional, and thus is able to arouse the student’s interest. But you cannot blame institutions of learning for being wary of acquiring too many men who are good teachers in the sense of being commonrun minds with an exceptional capacity for showmanship.
In short, one student’s opinion is not so good as that of another. Trouble starts, then, with the selection of the right students. I believe that your promising scholar is apt to be the man to whom the brilliant students flock. In the ‘dark’ Middle Ages, at the time of the beginning of our universities, this capacity to attract the brilliant student was of decisive importance. The great luminaries were the centres of an adoring student body which collected around them because of their exceptional ability as teachers and scholars. In European universities there is still a faint glimmer left of this ancient tradition; students go from university to university in search of the great teacher-scholar.
The great teacher and the great scholar are one and the same thing. To make a dichotomy between the two functions is a sign of not comprehending the life of the mind. Almost every college and university in the land has one or more such individual teachers. They often do more toward moulding the thinking of the coming generation than all the rest of the faculty put together. There can, accordingly, be no question that it is the task of the administration of every college and university, large or small, to gather as many such personalities as possible.
II
The quickening of the spirit in the United States has struck many acute foreign observers. André Siegfried saw it when he described America’s new adventures. The world-wide conquest of American literature is a striking feature of the post-war period. In art, music, and the sciences, similar strides have arrested the attention of workers in these fields throughout the world, and voices have occasionally been heard declaring that the next cycle in Western civilization would be dominated by American ideas and works. This quickening of the spirit has manifested itself in the student bodies of American colleges and universities. Even within my own fifteen years’ residence in this country I have been watching with amazement the constant broadening of intellectual vision in the younger generation. American intellectual life to-day is no longer an echo of European movements, but has struck out on its own path with unexcelled vigor. It is only natural that such intellectual ferment should manifest itself in an increase of students turning toward intellectual adventure as a life’s career.
Another factor which has greatly contributed toward the intensity of intellectual competition and has narrowed the chances of eventual success is the influx of foreign scholars. There is no question that these migrations have greatly enriched American scholarship; indeed, the year 1918 may appear as striking a landmark in the history of Western scholarship as the fall of Constantinople in 1453.
If you can picture yourself in the position of a university administrator, confronted by this wealth of available talent, you will more readily appreciate the reasons why the problem of just selection has not as yet been solved. Definite criteria are lacking for determining which one among, say, twelve available candidates is the most promising. The guidance which might be derived from intelligent student opinion is very difficult to secure. Each of the available candidates has a sponsor or sponsors, men who have worked in the same field and who have seen him do some fine work as a graduate student.
Faced by hopelessly conflicting opinions, the responsible administrator naturally tries to secure some tangible, incontrovertible evidence, preferably quantitative. Hence we get the increasing emphasis placed upon what is called scholarly production. No man in his right mind would admit, of course, that it was merely a matter of putting so much white paper with printer’s ink between book covers. But when it comes to choosing between the man who has published something scholarly and the man who has not, the decision is apt to be in favor of the ‘productive’ scholar. On what other ground shall the harassed president of a large university decide, if both candidates are backed by important men in the field, have done a little teaching quite successfully, and are otherwise unobjectionable?
Unhappily the proviso that the men be otherwise unobjectionable often hides a multitude of questionable considerations. Not only do discriminatory racial attitudes intrude themselves here, but if a man is blunt and disagreeable as a colleague, or holds views markedly out of line with the commonly accepted range of opinions, he will often find himself barred. The reason those considerations are relevant here is that they inject themselves so readily into the evaluation of precisely this ‘productive’ scholarship, which is supposed to provide the objective standard.
‘His work is unsound’ is the everrepeated slogan. This slogan may be vicious when applied in the social sciences or the humanities. For what is ‘sound’? ‘Sound’ is the adjective one applies to work with the premises or unproved assumptions of which he happens to agree. Lately, another such formula has been making a great impression in certain quarters. If one does not like the productions of a scholar, one calls him a ‘ theorist.’ What is a theorist? He is a man with whose unproved assumptions one does not agree. To him is opposed the man who gives us ‘ the facts, nothing but the facts.’ But who is such a ‘factualist’? He is a man whose unproved assumptions one does not notice, because one agrees with them so heartily that they appear simply ‘true.’ In the social-science field, practitioners with lack of adequate academic training love particularly to pose as such factualists. What is such a practitioner? A man who does not even know that unproved assumptions and premises exist.
All this goes to show that the ‘objective’ standard of scholarly production may be, and frequently is, a snare and a delusion. The university president in his swivel chair is still confronted by the enigma of qualitative evaluation. A promotion is to be made, and there are four available candidates. One has written two books, but the pundits in his field call them ‘unsound’ and ‘theoretical.’ Is he a genius or a fool? The other has written only three somewhat incomprehensible articles on esoteric subjects, but the wise men and great consider them promising of better things to come. The third has written nothing, but the great professor whom he is assisting swears that he possesses the most searching mind he has ever come in contact with. Number four has written one book which is declared fair, one article which suggests the same promise as number two. One and three are acclaimed by students as brilliant teachers; two, one hears, is a dull lecturer; four has had little teaching experience. What is the administrator going to do? Evidently, all four men are men of some ability; appointing any one of them will not wreck the university. Yet, he is supposed to pick the man who will be the most brilliant and distinguished at fifty. I am glad I do not have to make that selection.
Is there no hope of improvement? Must we forever struggle and grope in the darkness, ‘muddling through’ in a pitiful manner? I believe not. It seems to me that the time has come for experimenting with more objective methods. We have the more reason for doing so since we have before us the steady decline of the German universities during the last fifty years. Being confronted by rather similar conditions, they employed similar methods of confidential consultation. They also hit upon the same device of emphasizing ‘objective ‘ production. An enormous increase in learned monographs, an ever-widening bottom of footnotes, and an ever-increasing lack of really significant teaching and thinking in the universities were the result. When the National Socialists attacked and destroyed the universities, they — like the Turks in 1453 — killed what to many already appeared to be a corpse.
III
The task which is confronting us demands more objective methods of selection. What we need is to get away from the secretive consultation between small faculty groups and deans or presidents. At present, American universities persist in expecting decisive improvement through the selection of this or that genius. But what we really need to-day are methods of selection which are open and frankly competitive in terms of the particular tasks involved. There is no reason why the methods which are employed to give departments of the American government their large staffs of technical experts and research men, engineers, chemists, biologists, economists, and social scientists are not equally applicable to the task which faces us in the universities. We have to ascertain different qualities, of course, but there is reason to believe that we might do so by methods of open competition which incidentally are in accord with the general pattern of democratic society.
It is noteworthy that such methods of public competition were common in mediæval times, and survive in some of the democratic countries of Europe. The method of secretive dealings between faculty and administration is, on the other hand, derived from the aristocratic traditions of Oxford and Cambridge, and even more from the bureaucratic ways of monarchical Germany. The autocratic methods common in American business concerns have contributed their share in perpetuating these approaches to the personnel problems in American universities. But whereas such methods are entirely understandable in the competitive struggle of the commercial world, they have no place in the creative realm of higher learning, particularly in a democracy. The competition between our universities does not take such forms. There is no reason why available positions could not be properly advertised, and the application of men desiring to fill the position be considered on the basis of all available evidence.
The four or five candidates who would appear best qualified on the basis of their applications might then be invited to offer a lecture to the faculty and students of several schools and departments of the university. They might likewise be asked to conduct a discussion group on some suitable subject. It is encouraging that precisely such tests are informally arranged at the present time in those departments of our universities where the spirit of professional ambition free from scholastic jealousy prevails. These tentative practices should be given formal recognition.
It is my firm belief that such methods would help to dispel certain misgivings which at present attend too many appointments in controversial fields. Instead of secret dealings and unknown judgments, we should be facing a clear record. Such procedures would enable the responsible administrative officials in the universities to bring in outside judges who are prominent in each particular field. In Holland, the writings submitted by candidates for the higher academic positions are sent out to leading authorities. Where the subject matter is highly controversial, care is taken to secure the opinion of opposing camps. It is the everlasting advantage of such democratic methods that they disarm hostile and ill-willed critics. By calling forth adequate discussion before the important decisions are made, they evade the kind of aggravating and useless discussion which criticizes a decision after it has been irrevocably made. Even the student body, by forming part of the process, is more apt to feel itself an integral factor in the important selection of its future teachers, and more satisfied with the selections when made.
Some people object to this sort of proposal on the ground that it would be undignified and hence impossible. I have no doubt that one would have to work around to such methods gradually. But I believe that the change could be accomplished. The Guggenheim Foundation and the Social Science Research Council, as well as other learned agencies, have for some time employed similar methods with satisfactory results. The newly founded Graduate School of Public Administration at Harvard has been obliged to solicit elaborate applications from men well advanced in the governmental services, and has received a large number of such applications from men interested in working with the faculty in building the school. While it is too early to say whether the best men were in that manner secured, it is interesting to note that more telling and significant data were thus assembled in open competition than are often available in the selection of younger faculty members.
The truth is that we have been drifting along. Methods which were well adapted to colleges a hundred years ago when a president and dean presided over a small faculty have been retained without much consideration of their adequacy. In those days, as Morison’s Three Centuries of Harvard shows so convincingly, it was invariably a question of securing someone who would be qualified in any degree to fill the particular vacancy. There was no superabundance of ambitious young men anxious to enter the university’s service. Personal leadership was hence of the greatest moment. To-day, when all the larger universities confront a student body numbering thousands, with a faculty running into hundreds and dealing with all the conceivable fields of modern science and scholarship, we need different methods. Nothing will enable a president or dean, however remarkable as an intellectual leader, to accomplish the task which was possible in those pioneering days. The greatest service any such man can do for his institution is to evolve objective standards capable of public administration, to retire from the process personally as much as possible, and to restrict himself to overseeing the strict execution of the rules established for a thorough process of selection.
Neither teaching ability, nor productive scholarship, nor public acclaim, is by itself a reliable guide to individual men. Each is too much subject to biased distortion. Nor should the process of selection stress potential performance too much. It is hazardous enough in most fields of intellectual endeavor to ascertain actual performance at the present time. Let us appoint members to our faculties on the basis of their present achievement, without committing ourselves to their eventual promise. And let us not weigh too heavily the qualities which are relatively irrelevant when it comes to the life of the mind. For of all creation the life of the mind is the most mysterious.